This invention pertains generally to arranging and sorting apparatus and most particularily to centrifugal feeding apparatus particularily suitable for use with sorting apparatus such as a color sorter.
In color sorting apparatus of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,750,881, issued Aug. 7, 1973, articles to be sorted are arranged in a single file by allowing them to fall by gravity along a pair of inclined counter-rotating rollers. At the end of the rollers, the articles drop through an inspection station where they are scanned by photoelectric devices, and thereafter the articles are delivered to either an accept shute or a reject shute, depending on the color. While such apparatus works satisfactorily in some applications, it is limited in speed by the rate at which the articles fall from the counter-rotating rollers.